Origami

Welcome Reef. Yes, we have a lot of active Virginian's here. From Arlington to Winchester, and Leesburg all the way down to Orange (east of Charlottesville). Enjoy your stay. I'll re-emphasize what James said above: Join up.

Thanks, Sean, for the great salt (and frag) prices yesterday! It came in just in time as I was really needing some. http://www.wamas.org/forums/index.php?show...mp;#entry241802 The store's looking good, too, everybody. A new big tank is in the works, and there's a good selection of frags (starting pretty low - about $12 or so) and small colonies, inverts, and fish. If you've not been by, you should. It's incredibly convenient - just a minute off the Greenway in Ashburn. And, show 'em your WAMAS card and get a discount on livestock, too (They love us. They really love us! - apologies to Sally Field.) Let's support our local vendors and keep 'em growing. Sean, let me know when that Midas Blenny is out of QT! And, thanks again!

Well, that's pretty high. A good water change should be able to both bring your calcium up and bring your alkalinity down, which is the direction that you need to go. Aim for something like 300 for calcium and maybe 15 dKH or so for alk initially, then dose calcium over time as you let alk drop naturally. Target final parameters are your choice, but I like 425 ppm Ca and 10 dKH alk. If everything looks like it will make it, you can alternatively just dose calcium while letting the alk fall on it's own. Remember, corals consume about 1 dKH of alk for every 20 ppm of calcium. Your measurements are saying that you've about bottomed out on calcium. What salt are you using? And do you know how your Calcium - alkalinity balance got so out of whack? Are you able to check your magnesium levels?

Rob, I'm planning on going to get some salt. Would you like me to pick a box up for you? Tom

Jim, what are your parameters? It's hard to give advice without some numbers. Some tanks run very high alk - upwards of 15 - 20 dKH and there's some evidence to show that some corals actually grow much faster in this kind of environment. Most people run about half that, however. If your numbers are not too out of line, waiting it out is probably the best course of action (or inaction, depending upon how you look at it). Alk has a way of coming down quickly. You'll lose 1 dKH of alk for each 20 ppm of calcium.

Interesting adaptation.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7815540.stm "In nearly 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, and many thousands of vertebrate species living and dead, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes - how to make an image - using a mirror," "That must give the fish a great advantage in the deep sea, where the ability to spot even the dimmest and briefest of lights can mean the difference between eating and being eaten." Professor Julian Partridge Bristol University

I know what you mean (having been there before). I was using it on a car windshield. It was ineffective against pitting from the "sand blasting" of driving down the road, but could remove some of the glare-producing haze caused by much smaller scratches (that you couldn't feel with your fingernail). Still, I worked 2 hours on that windshield and, while the conditions were improved, I was faced with either getting a new windshield or getting rid of the (old) car. I chose to get rid of the car.

It slipped my mind, but I think that Roozens has bulkheads, too.

I've ordered them online, and purchased them locally from both BRK and from Aquaco. Uniseals are pretty cool but, like other things, have both strengths and weaknesses when compared to bulkheads. You won't find either at HD or Lowes.

Just because your nitrate and phosphate levels test low doesn't mean that you don't have a problem with them. It's very likely that your hair algae is trapping and exporting the extra nutrients and is part of keeping those levels low. Take a moment to describe your setup, parameters, livestock, and feeding regimen. Any other problems with algae? Cyano?

If you want to go FOWLR, you can have more. If you want to stick with a reef, you may want to be more cautious in adding more livestock. Like Grav said, look at the health, coloration, and growth of your corals, and your water parameters and let those tell you whether or not there's more capacity to take on additional bioload.

If they're really shallow, buffing with cerium oxide (which, by the way, you can get on ebay), may work for you. Just be prepared to work it for an hour or two. You can probably find the felt polishing bob on ebay or maybe even at HD or Lowes.

Great point, Garrett. Consumer grade tubs like you find at Lowes are pretty flexible and are known to stretch and occasionally split under the prolonged pressure in sump applications. That could put a whole lot of water on the floor if it were to fail. That's the beauty of the standard 5-gallon bucket: It's cheap and durable. You can't use a flat bulkhead though on it's curved surfaces, but you can use uniseals instead. In Bob's (lanman's) case, I think that he used a large, empty "Fresh Step" kitty litter bucket which is rectangular. As for the macro - DSB comparison, one advantage of the RDSB is that it's maintenance free - set it and forget it and uses virtually no power at all (except for a pump). A fuge with macro does take some maintenance and has lighting requirements. A side benefit of macro, however, are the pods that can possibly feed your tank and, if your tangs will eat it, give you a free and natural food source for the bigger critters you keep. My thinking is that my macroalgae require both nutrients and light to grow. Consequently, it's the stuff that's closer to the surface lighting that's doing most of the growing (for implementations that are lit at the surface, that is) and, thus, capturing nutrients. The stuff deeper down is probably not growing that much, but is being forced down deeper into the water column by the growth from above. If that assessment is accurate, the macro that's down deep is really not doing much at all to help with nutrient uptake. After all, if it's not growing, it's not much of a nutrient sink. The added depth does give you a longer time between harvests though. In my situation, I'm using a 20-high which is, in my opinion, does not allow much light penetration once the macro on the surface grows thick. That's why I decided to turn the bottom half into a sand bed (using my live sand from my old 90) and to use the upper half for macro. I tested for nitrates again last night (prompted by this thread) and got a reading of zero using two test kits. I can't say for sure if it's because I'm skimming more heavily now with a much larger skimmer, because I have over doubled my macroalgae, or if it's because I have a nice, remote deep sand bed, since I've changed so much in my system in the last several months. But, I'm very pleased with the zero reading that I'm getting and keeping without dosing carbon sources.

Drag your fingernail across the scratch. If you can feel it catch on the scratch, it's probably too deep to polish out without grinding first (which would lead to significant optical distortion). If it's shallow enough, it can be buffed out using a cerium oxide slurry as the abrasive and a hard felt buffing pad. You cannot do this under water, by the way, but it sounds like your tank is out of the water. Having buffed out a car windshield before, I can tell you that it can take a while and, personally, would very likely consider just getting a new aquarium if I found the scratches that you're talking about too distracting.

It is not necessary that it be kept in the dark. Darkness is a convenience that some use with their RDSB to stem the growth of algae, cyano or other photosynthetic nuisance forms. While DSB is short for Deep Sand Bed, RDSB can either stand for Remote Deep Sand Bed or Remote Deep Sand Bucket. The difference is in the implementation. The bucket implementation typically is nothing more than a deep container filled with a bunch of sand with a means to get water in and out. It can be either open or sealed, open to light or kept dark. You generally don't have macroalgae in the bucket implementation. It is perfectly acceptable to keep a deep sand bed in a 'fuge. Mine is in a 20-high where the bottom half is sand and the upper half is macroalgae. You do want to keep the detritus from accumulating, and in my case (where flow really doesn't do the trick because of the macroalgae), I have a few crabs and such in the fuge to keep things clean.

It's the cat litter, Bob. Calfo says that you should see results in about a month or so. You're beyond that already. When you started your RDSB implementation, Bob, I may have mentioned that I thought that maybe your bucket was a bit small for your system. You've got a really large system, and the bucket that you used seemed like it may have been undersized for the volume of water that you were processing as I recall. For example, I've read (http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=595109) that for systems of 100 gallons or so, you could get away with about 60# of sand in a 5 gallon bucket, but that for larger systems you'd need something a larger. For now, in my system (which is still recovering from my recent tank upgrade), I've got around 100# of sand, 9 inches deep in my 'fuge with a surface area of about 288 square inches, and probably over 400# total in the system. My nitrates are at zero, but I don't know if it's because of the sand bed since I'm now skimming rather heavily and have macro algae growing, and probably have something on the order of 350# of live rock in my system overall. I can say that, for now, I'm not dosing carbon sources anymore as there doesn't seem to be the need any longer. Still, it seems that you should have seen *some* reduction in nitrates, doesn't it?

Beautiful!

Hi Todd. I'm not sure that it needs to be "as high as possible." Though thee flow across the RDSB should be high enough to keep detritus in suspension and from settling out on the sand surface. I'm a believer that RDSB's work. They do take a little time to reach their full potential as bacteria populate the deepest parts of the bed, but the science behind them seems to be solid.

What size tank and do you have the drill bits to do the job? Do you know where you want the holes drilled?

James, if your skimmate production fell off in the last month, take a good look at the air intake of your skimmer pump to see if you've got a build up that's restricting the airflow. Also, check the impeller anbd the impeller cavity on the pump for build up, as well as the impeller blades for anything that doesn't look right. What model skimmer are we talking about anyway?

James, the RS series of skimmers do not appear to be recirculating and do not require a feed pump according to the Euroreef manual (available online). It is, I believe, a venturi driven skimmer with a needlewheel impeller used to break up the air into smaller bubbles.

From MSNBC... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28436388/ A snippet: "The rate at which corals absorb calcium from seawater to calcify their hard skeletons

I'd stop dosing the purple up (permanently) if it were me. One of Purple Up's talking points is about how it contains "ionic calcium" to help your tank. I suspect that you've been steadily building up this imbalance because of that product, since your kalkwasser is a balanced additive. To get back on track, stop dosing kalkwasser and Purple Up. Let the calcium drift down while dosing alkalinity (baking soda) to get and to keep your alkalinity in the 8-10 dKH range while the calcium drifts down to a target level of 417 (for 8 dKH alk) to 432 (for 10 dKH alk). After you reach a balanced condition, resume dosing kalkwasser and see if that is enough to keep the balance. Also, check your magnesium level as it can help with the coraline growth that you're seeking. The target level is around 1285 ppm. If you're low, you can dose mag flake or mag pellets to bring it up again. Here's a link to a reef chemistry calculator that you may find helpful: http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html An article on magnesium supplementation: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-07/rhf/index.php And this is a great article on correcting calcium and alkalinity imbalance that I found some time back. I found it very worthwhile and understandable: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

Here's to hoping things turn around for you soon.

Shorter blades on the impeller is one typical way that manufacturers use to reduce the pump output. I have heard about people removing impeller blades, but you have to be balanced about it, otherwise you wind up shortening the service life of the pump. In both cases, you need to make sure that the impeller remains balanced (just think of blade removal as an extreme form of blade shortening). Is there any chance that the pump that you've got has a flow adjustment already built in to it that resticts the intake? (That's another way that I've noticed that manufacturers use to give variable output capability to small centrifugal pumps like the one you're showing in your pictures.)